Mercor
Registered: Jun 2007
Posts: 3883 |
06-29-12 03:52 PM
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
There is a kernel of truth in what Will wrote. From a legalistic standpoint, it was gratifying that they ruled that there are some limits on the Commerce Clause
However, Will seems to have missed the fact that Roberts justified totally endrunning the Commerce Clause limitation by using the tax rationale. There may be close cases where something is either a tax or a penalty. This wasn't one of them. The fee for not having health insurance was clearly a penalty, designed to enforce compliance, and it was never intended otherwise.
In short, it doesn't matter what they said about the Commerce Clause, because it is a dead letter insofar as limiting congressional action.
Roberts makes the case that whatever you call it, it is all a tax.
Politicians calls things fee, mandates, bond sales to mask that all these revenues are in fact a tax.
The big change is that a tax used to be defined needing to be fairly applied to all populations.
Hopefully the public will now be more aware of all the stealth ways politicians are sucking money from the private sector.
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